The great by-elections sideshow
December 9th, 2009 by Mark Bahnisch | Published in By-elections, Media, Politics, Polls | 58 Comments
On Saturday night, I summed up the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections:
The final verdict – the whole thing is probably a bit of a side show.
The by-election results did, of course, lead to a particularly risible bit of Newspoll analysis (pace Possum) about the fabulous favour the Libs had done themselves by electing Tony Abbott, but since then, they’ve been kinda subsumed in the broader narrative of the Coalition’s Abbott/Joyce/Return of the Living Dead desire to rebadge ‘Howard’s battler’s’ as ‘Abbott’s Army’. A new piece of punditarial common sense in the making…
No doubt everyone will have forgotten Bradfield and Higgins soon, but in the meantime, Antony Green observes:
In my view there are very few implications that can be drawn from Saturday night’s result. Yes the Liberal Party improved its hold on both seats. However, both seats are unrepresentative of the general electorate because they are both very safe Liberal seats. There was no Labor candidate in either seat, making it hard to assess the results as a normal two-party contest. The Liberal party also ran highly localised campaigns in both seats and this played a part in isolating the result from the internal party shenanigans that went on in Canberra the week before the poll.
In summary, not much happened, everyone should move on.
Instead, journalists and bloggers across the country have become auguries, examining the entrails of the booth by booth results to try and divine some patterns. Godammit, it was an election, it must mean something!!
Green goes on to parse George Megalogenis’ claims in The Australian this morning (which I can’t find online). It’s a lengthy analysis, but the really important implications for Australian politics are contained in the last section:
In its article, the Australian draws implications for the Labor-Liberal contest from the swings in both seats. I think a better case could be made for using the results to examine how Labor voters react to the Greens as a political party.
The Australian is right in drawing the conclusion that Labor voters may react badly if the Labor Party adopted a strong Green agenda. Everything we know about the class support of Australian political parties shows that jobs, the economy and industrial relations are important for defining the differences between the Labor and Liberal Parties. Green issues are emerging as another point of difference, but old fashioned relationship based on the means of production still distinguish between the support bases of Australia’s major parties.
Were attitudes to climate change to dominate the political battleground at the 2010 election, then some of the conclusions drawn by the Australian would be valid. Attitudes to climate change plays an important role in defining Green support in opposition to the support base of the major parties. This is why a by-election between the Liberals and Greens can’t really be used to try and draw conclusions about a contest at the next election between the Labor and Liberal Parties. Some of the Green issues that created a difference between the Liberals and Greens also create a point of difference between Labor and the Greens.
My analysis of what happened to Labor’s first preference vote at the by-election reveals a more complex picture of the by-election than painted by the Australian and highlights the differences between Labor and Green support. The analysis also helps explain why the Labor Party has always wanted to negotiate passage of its emissions trading scheme with the Liberal Party rather than debate the detail with the Greens.
A final note should also be made on the quality of the data. The turnout in both seats was well down on the 2007 election and the informal vote up. The booths that showed the largest swings to the Liberals also happened to be the booths on the edge of the electorate, where the absence of Absent voting at the by-election may have changed the composition of who voted at the booths. Several of the booths with the largest swings, including Toorak West, Hughesdale North and Chatswood, were also booths where there was a dramatic change in the number of votes taken.
Update: The article Antony Green referred to can be found here.
I nearly had a cardiac arrest when I read about Abbott’s Army, after posting this here yesterday!
Tony’s stealing our ideas!!!
Abbotts Army
If it had of been a negative result for the Libs then that would have been a huge story – ETS/CC denialists lose, changing leader is terrible, Mad Monk etc etc etc
However, Libs do OK – Nothing to see here – move along.
The greens may be labeled as a left wing party but they often show very little sympathy to the true blue working class. All this talk about foresters and miners getting green jobs in the tourist industry fails to acknowledge that it is a bit hard to imagine some of these workers fitting in and the transfer would result in a massive drop in earnings. Putting a price on carbon, punishing polluters plus a general disregard for anyone no longer fit enough to ride a bike, stand up for a long time in public transport etc.
If the greens want to expand their support they start asking themselves how their environmental goals can be met with minimum damage to peoples quality of life. They also should start supporting approaches to reducing emissions that people can understand, not just different versions of emission trading.
Er John have you checked out the discrepancy between who would have been covered by the new industrial laws if the ALP had its way, the COALition had its way[even fewer than the ALP version] and the extra number of true blue workers who received protection thanks to the Greens amendments?
When it came to worker protection the Greens were the truest bluest.
Razor is correct. Thus if a negative result would have caused us much joy then a positive result should give us pause.
This win essentially gave Abbott his mandate to knock back the ETS.
That’s revisionist. Abbott (strongly) ruled out any link to federal matters (leadership, CPRS etc) in the run up to the by-elections. Then he claimed the reverse once the result was in.
That’s politics, not a mandate.
“This win essentially gave Abbott his mandate to knock back the ETS.”
If it was his “mandate”, tssk, how come he knocked back the ETS before the win in the two seats?
Hope your happy with him resurrecting the living dead as way Razor
Mark, could it be the comments on Megalogenis’ blog?
No, but thanks, Guido. It was a front page story in the dead tree version.
I think this analysis is broadly right—as long as it’s not applied to most of the modern Labor tradition built by Whitlam and his successor PMs.
Does it apply to trade unionism in general? It should, but watching AWU national secretary Paul Howe on Lateline last week I see how cultural Whitlamism/Hawke Keating ecomomic pragmatism can be a viable message for the younger organised labour activists.
I think Antony Green is really identifying the depth of misunderstanding residual socialists+nonHowesque union people have with the Greens, whether he knows it or not. I don’t see why this (means of production, etc) defines the relationship between the majors (or the relationship between most open-minded Labor poeple and the Greens for that matter—remember Biffa going to Tasmania’s old growth forest for that photo-op with St Bob? I don’t remember anyone but the CFMEU going nannas over that in Latham’s camp at the time.)
Though I suppose there are plenty of ALP Rightwingers who get all McCarthyite about the Greens for no good reason, except for the Greens being the other.
I rest my case?
It escapes me how any conclusions can be drawn from a by-election in which only one major party ran.
Antony Green touches on a very interesting point, though. I get the sense from Green supporters that they think that inside every ALP supporter is a slightly less evolved Green. Nothing could be further from the truth. While Labor will always take environmental issues more seriously than the Libs, the bulk of Labor’s working class and lower-middle class supporters aren’t going to become Greens anytime soon (if ever). There’s overlap on many of the issues we care about, we are both on the Left, but we are different species.
The relationship between Labor and the Greens is at times wierdly symbiotic and at others very testy. But there is perhaps a message in all this for Bob Brown and Christine Milne: there are limits to the growth of the Greens’ vote and the Greens need Labor just as much as Labor needs the Greens (if decent environmental legislation is to be passed). If the Greens do gain the balance of power at the next election, don’t abuse the relationship.
The majority of true blue workers remain unemployed,underemployed pensioned off,or dreaming up solutions for themselves and others,whilst the usually guilty of failure,the planners,educators,administrators,commentators Advisors bureaucrats,go about claiming all sorts of things,that prove regulating them,the aforesaid,just said, mentioned will be unproductive.So no-one has noticed in the last couple of days the paper co.in Tasmania and another abbatoir closing in N.S.W.!?There is no confidence in political point scoring.The Greens didn’t actually cause a problem for either,but the solutions for individuals and industries maybe,somewhat different,although they may not have to be either.I remain unimpressed by the Greens,because for many compulsory voting hasn’t empowered people at all.
Mark,
This is all a bit strange, don’t you think?
You run a critique without reference to the original article. Imagine if Andrew Bolt did such a thing.
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Now I don’t mind Antony, and have no intention in engaging a tit for tat because he didn’t name me in his piece. Fact is, I happen to agree with him that you can’t over-egg these by-elections.
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That said, I suspect he might be reading a little too much into what was a straight news article that made no predictions, and offered no opinions, and had half the space eaten by copy from a second reporter.
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Antony doesn’t quote from the article, so let me give you three lines I wrote to chew over:
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“Labor has more marginal seats to defend outside the capital cities, where the opposition hopes to find fertile ground for a scare campaign over an emissions trading scheme.
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“But the Liberals have more marginal seats on the line in the cities, where the government believes voters will punish any party that does not take climate change seriously.”
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Both statements of fact, you would think.
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Now the punchline: “Newspoll has shown a swing to Labor since the last election, so the opposition is at risk of going backwards if the ETS scare doesn’t bite, or if it backfires.”
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My opinion, for what it is worth, and which was included in the Monday article one of your readers linked to, is that Labor would be kicking itself for not running in Higgins. Given the criss-cross of swings (from Labor booths to the Liberal candidates, from Liberal booths to the Green candidates, and the high informal vote) you’d think if Labor had stood a candidate, then the Liberals might have finished with a lower 2pp vote because, remember, their higher-income booths did swing against them. If that had been the case, we’d be having a different debate today.
I am getting heartily sick of all this homoerotic pugilist fantasy, as a metaphor for virility, I suppose, when describing a political party that consists of, and represents, the walking dead.
@13 – GM:
The Australian is making it harder and harder to find articles online. It’s not my doing.
In any case, the argument of the article is summarised in Antony Green’s critique.
Mark,
I wrote the article and I don’t recognise it in Antony’s essay.
Bear in mind, he hasn’t quoted from it.
I’m old school. If I were having a crack, I’d include a quote or two.
But I wouldn’t have a crack, you see, because I don’t waste my time generating content in The Australian by jumping on the back of things that other commentators say. Life’s too short to cross-reference colleagues.
Bottom line here, and the reason I got in touch, is you sell your readers short by running the critique without giving them the offending article.
You say you can’t because it wasn’t online. Well, that leaves you with a one-sided post. His word, without mine to compare.
George, why don’t you just give us, the readers, the link to your article if you are so concerned?
The reason I come to various blogs, this one first, for my political information and analysis, is that I find the management follows a higher standard of integrity than the usual alternative.
Absolutely!
GM – we’ll happily post your article in full if you send the text, or else you can add a link in the comments for people to click on.
Razor – the Libs keeping a seat they always win? Doesn’t mean very much. Had the Libs lost a seat they always win, it would have been a big story. In the same way, if the Libs had won a safe Labor seat on the weekend, that would have been a story. You must surely understand that.
GM:
And so the alternative would be…? Look at it as like a book review, perhaps. But it’s a little unreasonable to complain about Mark’s piece not referring to your article when your article is unable to be referred to with any more detail than Mark already gave.
Anna – fair enough.
It would be nice to hear that MacKerras apologises occaisonally for being so very wrong, wouldn’t it.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any indication of the postal vote for either of the two recent by-elections?
I was wondering if, as the postal vote was probably mostly made before Mr Turnbull lost the leadership, it would reflect those conditions rather than the leadership of the Liberals following last Tuesday’s “interesting events”?
Is it really so hard to buy a copy of the newspaper?
All my columns are online. One doesn’t go up, a news article to be precise, and you guys carry on like someone has denied you your freedom of speech.
Do some reading for yourselves is all I’m saying.
GM,
I read everything of Rupert’s on=line for free. Not that interested in buying a rag full of Liberal Party propaganda.
Yes, backcopies are difficult to obtain and, in this instance, would mean the purchase and support of an ugly, biased, package .
The column in question is not online and we can do no more than rely on secondary sources. It is you, who has direct access to the article, who is doing the protesting. George said…. “Bottom line here, and the reason I got in touch, is you sell your readers short by running the critique without giving them the offending article.”
Listening to the spin doctors segment of ABC 702 was interesting this morning, as they evaluated the year in spin. A couple of them said that the biggest losers of the year were journalists, as they continued to get it wrong on a regular basis, and their credibility has suffered as a result.
Like economists, journalists seem to be one of the few professions that continue to make mistakes with apparent impunity, as their failed predictions or transparent spinning disappear into the ether.
Perhaps it’s because the currency of opinion has been so devalued that few bother taking it seriously anyway.
Reading this thread reminds me of what a precious bunch they are. One of the few (only?) reasonable voices on the OO complains that his article is not reproduced on this site and then apparently refuses to make it available.
It’s not a question of ‘freedom of speech’, it’s a question of those complaining being in a position to rectify the cause of the complaint and not doing so.
Anna, George has already sold his copy (and most likely his rights over the piece) and it may well be a breach of copyright for him to send it here.
I’ve just come back from having read George’s article. Antony has an interesting take on the byelections and you don’t need to have read the article in The Australian to critique Antony’s position – as George said himself, Antony was going him indirectly if at all. It will be interesting to see what happens in those Labor-held seats where the Greens have the second-biggest share of the vote (which tend to be electorates where educated information workers have largely replaced less educated manual-labour workers), like Greenway and Sydney in NSW, or Balmain and Marrickville at the state level, and other seats in other states. It will also be interesting to see data from Tasmania, where they have practical experience of blue-collar-job creation schemes being kyboshed by the Greens, ever since the Gordon-below-Franklin dam in ’83.
I am getting heartily sick of it full stop. (And yes, ‘homoerotic pugilist fantasy’ is exactly what it seems to be, though I would add that it’s homosocial as well.) The former amateur boxer and author of a book called Battlelines is going to give the Government the ‘fight of its life’ at the head of something called ‘Abbott’s Army’, formerly ‘Howard’s Battlers’, because it thinks the Australian public wants a ‘contest’?
What next, gladiators? Bear-baiting? Lions v Christians? No, scrap that last one, wrong metaphor altogether.
I was thinking more ‘Abbott’s Rabbits’. Say it fast.
“Abbott’s Rabbits” – I love it.
I’ve gone into greater detail here on why Labor must surely know they have Abbott’s measure, whatever they may say publicly. For starters, the contest between Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Bronwyn Bishop over ageing/seniors is like the Costello-Howard thing writ small, very small. The rest of them aren’t much chop against a government that could be vulnerable, which could lift its game if only there were a fire lit under it.
Leave us queer folks out of it. There’s nothing homoerotic about pugilism. Homosocial? yep for sure. But just lay off the homophobic spinning of Abbott and co.
adrian,
you say
“… (GM) complains that his article is not reproduced on this site and then apparently refuses to make it available. It’s not a question of ‘freedom of speech’, it’s a question of those complaining being in a position to rectify the cause of the complaint and not doing so.”
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Perhaps I was being a little too subtle in my original comment to Mark.
I offered three quotes from the offending piece, plus a separate opinion, for what it was worth, for people on this site to chew over. No bad faith at this end because I was happy to continue debating the national scene here.
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Andrew E has it right, by the way. It would not be worth my job to send an article to you that isn’t online. Do you want me to send some free chapters from my books while I’m at it?
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The first principle here, always, is the discussion. You can’t have a fair one if you base it on a secondary source. I offered some context to give readers more to think about. But we seem to sweating the misconception that somehow I have to cough up the entire piece before I can join the debate.
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As I said, all you had to do was buy the paper. But I see you want it for “free” hence the gag about “freedom of speech”.
I would imagine that Mega’s copy is owned by the Australian. I doubt he would have the right to distribute it himself.
Just goes to show I didn’t read yesterday’s online edition.
It was there after all.
Very funny. Now feel free to hop into me.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/results-point-to-climate-poll-challenge/story-e6frg6n6-1225808410719
GM, I think you are being a little precious with your argument. Mark is pretty good about linking to source material (as are the other posters here at LP) when he can. In this case he explained why he hadn’t linked to it but still said where your original was, so people could still check the original if they wanted to.
I think people here are smart enough to realise they were being offered a comment on another article, with all the limitations that involves. Antony Green’s quoted comments riffed off your article but made sense to me on their own. If your concern was that he misrepresented you, a simple comment to that effect and encouragement to read the print article would have done nicely.
What more do you want exactly? No blog posts commenting on any print material? Mark to type in the original manually?
GM, thanks for the link. I’ll add it to the post.
I would point out that it’s getting harder to find stuff on The Australian’s website.
… and if your stuff (or others we want to talk about) ends up getting paywalled, you’ll have to talk to Rupert Murdoch about people discussing it in the absence of a link.
It’s also always been open to you to refute Antony’s critique (and essentially mine is just a links post, with a bit of commentary as an intro.)
GM: “Now feel free to hop into me.”
With all due respect, the rabbits are more likely to be at your place.
George,
There were, what, about 150,000 people voting in those elections?
How lucky were you that the 2 you interviewed, Kate and George, between them ‘were happy’ that Abbott ‘the last minute saviour’ had come in.
I wonder if those sentiments were shared by any of the people who did vote Green, or Sex, or whatever else other than Lib?
Did you interview any or them?
If so what did they say?
Harsh, but fair, Andrew.
Jeez, I think you’re going a bit far to say I “parse George Megalogenis’ claims”. The Australian article in question goes on to a sensible discussion about how climate change issues could play out in the electorate at next year’s election. Claims about the implications of the booth results were made on Monday, but I was too tired to write about it then. That the booth results were still being used as a hook for a story on Wednesday just inspired me to finally write up my thoughts.
I’ve got a bit more room to deal with subtleties of voter behaviour in a dedicated blog than anybody writing a front page story has. The positioning and emphasis of a story also has much more to do with editorial decisions than anything written by the journalist. That interpetation of the by-election booth swings keeps getting repeated is just an example of how news coverage can become like a game of Chinese whispers.
AG’s last sentence is a great summation of the current state od political journalism in Australia.
hannah’s dad,
Actually, I made those quotes up, and attached them to some people we found at a local pub. They thought they were being quizzed about Tiger Woods. Which is a roundabout way of saying, sorry, I didn’t do the interviews.
Have another look, there are two bylines on the article which means two people contributed to it.
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Now that Antony and I are back where I guessed we would have been — on the same page — can I ask Antony whether he thinks Abbott might be in danger of arousing the lesser of two bases on the ETS?
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The Libs have Sturt, Stirling and Wentworth in the inner metro, and Bowman, La Trobe, Hughes, Ryan, Cowan, and Boothby in the outer metro all marginal.
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Many of these seats had been Labor in the past, and you’d think they’d be up for grabs if the government is seen as the more credible economic manager.
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By the way, thanks Antony, I appreciate the follow-up.
Oh this stoush is just getting started. Hope you prodeans can make po-mo popular by election time because I’d wager we’re all going to see alot more of this.
George.
Which didn’t answer any of the questions that followed nor how lucky whoever did the interviews was to strike just those two out of 150,000.
Particularly when you consider that more people polled nationwide recently [by ER] were less likely [33%] to vote Lib because of Abbott than more likely [21%].
Sorry George I don’t buy your flippant response.
Which is a bit of a shame cos usually I find your articles better than the average.
Strewth dudes, go easy on the ‘Log.
He’s one of the good ones. As in, a professional political journo who goes beyond ‘avowed’ and actually walks the impartisan walk.
/my 2c
I stick to old fashioned simplicities in Australian electoral behaviour. Elections are normally decided in the outer suburbs of the capital cities, the mortgage belt where families are at the point in life where their ingoings and outgoings are most likely to require delicate balance. Seats like Wentworth just don’t swing very much.
The AEC’s classification of the seats can be very eccentric. They have no sensible definition of what a rural electorate is. Their category of ‘provincial’ makes little sense as it lumps everything not otherwise categorised together, so it includes the Gold Coast, Newcastle and the Illawarra in one category.
hannah’s dad,
Apologies. I didn’t even select the interviews, that’s why I couldn’t answer your questions.
But I can say the reporters who did the work spent the day in the field in Bradfield and in Higgins looking for examples across all voter types.
Most people are reluctant to be quoted, so you take what you can get, subject to the usual constraint that the case study should reflects something that did happen in the by-election. In the examples we cited, we have Labor voters who voted Liberal ahead of Green. You take them all with a grain of salt, just as the main parties take their focus groups with a grain of salt.
Incidentally, many Labor voters told us they cast informal ballots, but wouldn’t agree to quoted along those lines. I did feed that thought into the main piece. That’s why I am wary of reading too much into the result.
Agreed Antony,
And long-term governments tend to pick up more of the mortgage belt as they move through the cycle (from memory Hawke in ’87, certainly Howard in ’04).
I agree, the AEC classifications do my head in. Though under pressure of deadline they sometimes come in handy.
I’d watch Wentworth if Turnbull doesn’t contest. Its demography is creeping Labor’s way.
I don’t get how this kerfuffle about not being able to link to GM’s Oz article came about: a google news search with any of the three quotes George provided finds it no problem at all, now at least, as it would by using any number of other literal strings Mark could have used from the article he read in the paper.
Since it was a front page article, it’s freely accessible via the http://www.pressdisplay.com/ service where you get free unlimited access to the front page of over 1000+ newspapers and magazines and also able to read 2 articles of each current issue per email registration. George’s article was split over two pages, so that routine would have needed to be invoked, but how hard is that?
Is it the case that it wasn’t so easily findable with news google yesterday, when people did such a search? Has Rupert started selectively withholding articles from the browser-space, and this particular one only became available online after an unseemly and unexplained delay?
As long as he doesn’t mess with the google alert ability to search for, find and email personally defined info-morsels I’m happy. Not much point making archives of every occurrence of “whatever your special topic is” from news , web, and blog domains if google only sees some news articles.
Thank you George.
This response replaces the one that I was about to send, partly as a response to FDB [I substantially agree with your assessment FDB] and partly to continue to ask why such an anomalous duet of interviews that so luckily made it into print came about.
You would, of course, understand why many people, Greens and ALP supporters in particular, would be reluctant to be quoted by “The Australian”.
See,I have actually quoted you in depth around the place on a particular issue, [and got hammered for it I might add, politely tho'] and would like to do so again in general.
Thanks for the response.
“That’s why I am wary of reading too much into the result.”
And that, George, is an example of why you get a great deal more respect, here, than the others you work with. Their spin on these results, and the recent Newspoll, to the effect that Abbott was somehow ‘now in business’, has been typically laughable and obviously partisan. He and his party continue to be well behind just as Turnbull was.
I reckon there is a fairly dedicated reform base for doing something about AGW, even if it is divided on the current ETS policy—and until the demise of Turnbull all parties save for the Nats were playing for a share of that vote. (I supose I shouldn’t be referring to a cross-partisan phenomenon as a ‘base’.)
Yet that other voting tendency Abbott is now pandering to is, well, just not a very winning group of people for a Coalition Opposition. And cross party? How is there a large block of anti-ETS Labor-leaning voters out there just willing to vote for a Workchoices warrior like Abbott, just to teach the hippies a lesson?
I don’t want to get George Megalogenis in trouble for being on this thread, but I predict the likes of Collis and Sutchbury to (a.) run hard until election day on the notion that there is an army of blue collar people out there who’ll vote anti-ALP for the first time in their lives because of the ETS, and (b.) declare that the whole political system is fucked the day after the landslide re-election of the Rudd government, partly because those stupid bloody bogans decided to act like the turkeys they are and vote for Christmas. Stupid bloody bogans.
These guys and gals get another chance in under two years don’t they?!!?
There isn’t.
And a lot of the tradies and labourers and factory workers Abbott would like to enlist in his ‘army’ know very well that their continued employment has been a function of the Rudd stimulus.
Danny, this isn’t my job. I read the dead tree paper, and later I wrote a very quick post in a break from doing other things. It used to be easier to find stuff on the Oz’ website. Sometimes I don’t have time to go hunting around google news or wherever. Just the way it is.
Antony @42 – no, I don’t think I was going too far, though I’m happy to accept what you say about what was in your mind when you wrote the post. What we think others will take from a piece of writing is not always congruent with what they do, and I can justify that as easily from my own experience as a writer whose work is constantly subject to comments as I could from communications or literary theory.
It’s the way I read your post, and I think it’s a justifiable reading. It may not be the one you intended, but all we ever have is the words, not the intent behind them.